Wednesday, January 26, 2011

CEBU CITY -- Mandaue City's officials are studying a recommendation to declare the entire city a calamity area, so funds can be quickly released to buy boats and suction pumps to deal with the next flood.

Preparations are also underway for Cebu and Mandaue to work together in dredging Mahiga Creek, one of three creeks that overflowed during 90 minutes of heavy rain last Tuesday.

The Office of Civil Defense (OCD) in Central Visayas reported 13 barangays in Metro Cebu, eight of them in Cebu City, were hit by the floods that triggered massive traffic jams.

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama said he plans to lease heavy equipment to dredge rivers and asked the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to help relocate hundreds of families living on the banks of rivers and creeks.

So far, one fatality has been confirmed. An eight-year-old boy died after being swept away in the Kamputhaw River in Cebu City.

Among the proposed solutions is a food-for-work program where residents will receive rice, noodles and canned goods, in exchange for declogging their canals and drainage systems.

Councilor Roberto Cabarrubias, who chairs the committee on infrastructure in the Cebu City Council, met Wednesday with stakeholders. Barangay Tejero and Mambaling are the pilot areas.

Forty residents in Mambaling and 30 in Tejero are needed to clean up the communities' canals and drainage system.

Officials of both Cebu and Mandaue have yet to figure out how much damage, in terms of property and business disruptions, last Tuesday's flood caused. What's clear is that no single solution will do, and that communities and cities will have to work together.

Two cities

Alvin Santillana, executive director of the Cebu City Disaster Coordinating Council, met with Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes on Wednesday to discuss how both cities can dredge Mahiga Creek.

The waterway flows through interior portions of both cities, before going out to Mactan Channel.

Santillana officials of both cities, together with representatives from SM City Cebu, will inspect the creek today, Thursday.

In an emergency meeting Wednesday, the Mandaue City Disaster Coordinating Council (CDCC) passed a resolution recommending the declaration of a calamity in the whole city.

The City Council may hold a special session before the weekend to act on the recommendation.

He said City Hall intends to buy four fiberglass boats and at least one suction pump for each of the city's 27 barangays, using the calamity funds.

"A lot of things will happen between now and March," said Cortes, adding he expects everybody to be prepared the next time. The La Niña season, which is associated with more frequent rains, is forecast to last until March.

Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama said improving the drainage system in the city is among his administration's priorities, but that he can't solve the flooding problem alone.

Clearing

Mayor Rama also said he is willing to clear the three-meter easements of the riverbanks, but wants the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to contribute.

He challenged the DENR to provide funds, in addition to that of City Hall and the Department of Public Works and Highways, so that the banks of rivers and creeks can be cleared of informal settlers.

He assured the agency he has the political will to relocate the informal settlers, if DENR will help.

For Mandaue's part, Cortes said all members of barangay disaster brigades will need to undergo training again in disaster preparedness and rescue operations.

The City will also buy portable radio communication sets for disaster brigade members.

"Kada usa naa ta'y responsibilidad. Ang abuso sa tao mopauli sa atong lawas (We all have responsibilities. We suffer the consequences of our abusive behavior)," said Cortes, who pointed out that the uncontrolled disposal of waste contributed to the flood.

The City will clear waterways of illegal structures, de-clog drainage pipes and strictly enforce an ordinance banning plastic bags.

Stranded

At the height of the floods, 254 passengers, who were stranded at the North Reclamation Area, were ferried by fire trucks from Cebu City to Mandaue City, the civil defense office said.

In Barangay Subangdaku, Mandaue, 341 families were evacuated and transferred to a hinterland portion of the barangay. Niel Sanchez, OCD operations chief, said majority of the families have gone back to their houses.

In Mandaue City, the barangays of Tipolo, Subangdaku and Guizo were greatly affected. Barangay Basak in Mandaue was also affected, Sanchez said.

Minimal flooding also hit Poblacion, Lapu-Lapu City, the OCD said.

The OCD, though, is still waiting for the official report from the local disaster councils in the cities hit by the flood.

The OCD recognized the agencies that immediately responded in the rescue and evacuation operations.

These are the Central Command, Bureau of Fire Protection, the Philippine Coast Guard, Talisay Rescue Team, Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation, the Philippine National Police, Philippine Army, and the local disaster centers.

High-risk

Sanchez hopes the flood last Tuesday has reminded local government officials about the need to properly monitor high-risk areas.

"We have been calling on the LGUs to monitor high-risk areas. There should have been the proper pre-positioning of equipment," he said.

In Talisay City, councilors are studying a proposal to ban the use of plastic bags in malls, stores and public markets, as one way to prevent flooding.

Councilor Rodolfo Cabigas said a committee will study the proposal to use paper bags, instead of non-biodegradable plastic products.

"This is one solution that we are eyeing to prevent flooding. But we have to discuss it thoroughly for its strict implementation," he said.

In the meantime, City Hall will conduct a clean-up drive and declog all canals and waterways in Talisay.

Cabigas, chairman of the committee on public infrastructure, observed that plastic bags containing residents' refuse have clogged up the city's waterways and drainage, causing runoff water to overflow.

The City Disaster Coordinating Council (CDCC) and the local rescue team were advised to stay alert in case of emergencies.

The CDCC will also monitor shorelines, riverbanks and other areas that are prone to flooding and landslides, so they can evacuate the residents immediately, when necessary.

The Federation of Philippine Industries is urging the local and national governments to focus on improving the garbage collection system and on building recycling facilities, instead of creating laws and ordinances banning the use of plastic bags and other plastic products.

FPI chair Jesus Arranza said plastic bags, by themselves, were not the cause of drainage problems that have been causing floods.

"It is a wrong argument to say that plastics should be banned because the sewers are getting clogged. Plastics are not the problem but the waste recovery and recycling system. That is the area where we should focus our attention on and not on the use of plastics per se,'' he said.

Plastics, if used wisely and disposed properly, he said, would actually be environment-friendly and less costly. However, to prevent plastics from just being thrown anywhere, local and national governments should improve waste collection activities and put up recyling plants.

"What we need to do is to improve our waste recovery and recycling programs from the barangay level up to the national government. In England, for example, they managed to put up the world's largest recycling facility out of the proceeds from the sale of the recovered wastes,'' he related.

He said industry players would be ready and willing to buy plastic wastes to prevent these from being thrown just anywhere. The buying, however, would have to be done at the barangay level, which meant collection efforts should be spearheaded by village officials.

This scheme would provide the barangay with an additional revenue stream and prevent the clogging of the drainage systems. Industry players, on the other hand, would have local access to raw materials, effectively reducing the volume of resins that they would have to import, he said.

The plastics industry has also been employing 175,000 people, most of whom would end up jobless if all local governments, and even the national government, banned the use of plastic bags.

The Muntinlupa City government has started implementing an ordinance banning the use of plastic bags in commercial establishments within the city.

A number of bills, advocating either a ban on the use of plastics or an increase in levies on the product, have been pending in Congress.

MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino is open to amending the Oil Deregulation Law amid the almost weekly price increases by most oil companies.

“I think it was in my first term [that] I first mention that I really was wondering, how come they all increase their prices to the same level and roughly at the same time?" he told reporters on Jan. 26.

"There should have been different efficiencies that would have produced the price factors. So that is, I guess, an aspect that I want to really study further,” Aquino said after attending the Tenth Biennial Conference of the International Council of Universities of St. Thomas Aquinas (ICUSTA) at the University of Santo Tomas campus.

He also said he is open to a suggestion for the Palace to sit down with private oil firms for a possible 30-day 'waiting period' before implementing a price hike.

"That seems to be a good suggestion. We will have to consult the oil companies. As you know, [the] price of oil in the world market -- by information -- keeps on increasing. So perhaps that can be a formula that can meet their needs and also meet our desire to keep the prices more reasonable," President Aquino told reporters

In a statement on Jan. 25, Sen. Ralph Recto said the 30-day 'waiting period' "would give motorists and other oil-dependent sectors some breathing space before another price shock hits them."

“The weekly price increases are now taxing the patience and wallets of the public. The government could temper the accumulating national outrage by appealing to oil companies to do their increases every 30 days,” wrote the Senate ways and means chair and energy panel senior member.

The senator also noted that the waiting period coincides with the first-in-first-out policy in accounting for oil inventory. This means that oil stocks bought at lower prices or before any upward global price movement should be the first stocks to be sold to the public.

THE island of Camotes faces the possibility of a blackout if there’s no delivery of diesel to its power plant by Jan. 31.

Camotes Electric Coope-rative’s General Manager Rolando Camaso said the diesel supplied by the National Power Corp. (NPC) is enough to last only until the last day of this month. The contractor’s latest delivery of 12,000 liters was last Jan. 24.

Only 53 of the 6,000 taxi units operating in Metro Cebu have had their meters calibrated as of yesterday, the Land Transportation and Regulatory Board said.

LTFRB-7 Director Ahmed Cuizon said six taxi units have been subjected to calibration last Monday, nine other units on Tuesday, and 38 more had their meters calibrated as of 3 pm yesterday.

Having their meters calibrated would allow the taxis to collect the new fare rates – P40 as a flag down rate and P3.50 after every 250 meters.

Most of the taxi units are still collecting the P30 flag down rate and P2.50 for every succeeding 250 succeeding meters.

Cuizon attributed the low turnout to weather and a possible “wait-and-see attitude” on the part of drivers and operators.

“Aside from the continuous rains, drivers and operators are probably still in a wait-and-see attitude since passengers are definitely not in favor of the increase,” he said.

But their self-imposed delay will not last long, Cuizon said, because the operators will be fined P5,000 after three months from the start of the implementation of the new rates last January 24 and another P150 for every week thereafter.

Cuizon once again reminded the public not to pay the new rates if the taxi unit they are riding in does not have a calibrated meter or cannot issue an official receipt.

Taxis that have undergone calibration had their meters tested and resealed by LTFRB-accredited technicians. They should have the orange LTFRB logo marked with the words “tested and resealed” on their windshield. Drivers and operators are prohibited from destroying the gold colored wire used as seal of the meter.

Dinagat Representative Ruben Ecleo, Jr., the prime suspect in the death of his wife Alona, testified in court yesterday that Alona’s brother, Ben Bacolod, was the last person to be with his wife before she went missing eight years ago.

LAWYERS representing Dinagat Island Rep. Ruben Ecleo Jr. hope to finish presenting their witnesses within the first quarter of the year.

Defense lawyer Orlando Salatandre, Ecleo’s counsel, said with the prosecution finally wrapping up its cross-examination of Ecleo yesterday, they have yet to decide whether to conduct a direct re-examination.

Ecleo, head of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA), is being tried for allegedly murdering his wife Alona Bacolod and throwing her body in a ravine in Dalaguete town in 2002.

MANILA - A deadly bomb on a Manila bus appears similar to devices used recently on Mindanao island, a troubled region where Muslim separatists and Maoists guerrillas are active, the Philippine government said on Wednesday.

MANILA, Philippines - The Abu Sayyaf may be behind the fresh terrorist act on Tuesday because of the incident’s close similarity to the Valentine’s Day bombing in 2005, a Philippine security official said told ABS-CBN News Channel.

(Updated 10:10 p.m.) Police investigators are searching for two suspects in the bombing of a passenger bus that killed 5 passengers and are trying to determine whether the explosive pointed to the notorious Abu Sayyaf group. Witnesses told investigators that two got off the bus minutes before the explosion, and that they had sat in the same area where the bomb went off.

MANILA, Philippines - A proposal to register all subscriber identity modules (SIM) for cellphones has been revived after police said an explosive that killed 5 people inside an EDSA bus was triggered using a mobile phone.

MANILA, Philippines - Allies of Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the House of Representatives on Wednesday scored President Aquino’s apparent failure to prevent Tuesday’s bombing in Makati City.

The Supreme Court has affirmed the decision convicting three members of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf for bombing a bus on Feb. 14, 2005 in Makati. The decision was promulgated Jan. 10, 2011 but was made available to the media only on Wednesday, a day after another passenger bus was bombed while it was cruising along the EDSA in Makati.

MANILA, Philippines - Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo said 7 active and retired law enforcement officials are being investigated for their possible involvement in carjacking incidents in Metro Manila and nearby provinces in Luzon.

THE ARMED Forces of the Philippines (AFP) proposed a P42.13 billion budget before the House Committee on National Defense and Security yesterday in a hearing at Camp Aguinaldo. It aims to upgrade and purchase additional equipment during the current administration.

Philippine police said Wednesday they suspected a former government official and at least four others were involved in the murder of a crusading journalist to stop him from exposing environmental crimes.

Gerardo Ortega, 47, was shot dead on Monday while shopping shortly after finishing a daily morning radio broadcast, which he regularly used to rail against illegal mining and other environment abuses on Palawan island.

"This was apparently a hired killing. Dr Ortega was well known for his campaign for environmental protection," Superintendent Rolando Amurao told AFP from Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan where the murder occurred.

The gunman was caught immediately after the murder but Amurao said police believed at least four other people were involved, including a former administrator of Palawan who owned the weapon used in the killing.

The official, Romeo Seratubias, surrendered and police intend to charge him with murder, Amurao said.

"The gun was registered to him, that's why we intend to charge him," Amurao said of Seratubias, who was the administrator of resource-rich Palawan until last year and had since been working as a lawyer.

Aside from the gunman and Seratubias, three other people had also been linked to the killing and police had launched a manhunt for them, Amurao added.

They include a man who allegedly acted as the gunman's lookout and two middlemen including one who handed the contract killers’ part of the agreed 150,000 pesos ($3,370) payment to murder Ortega, Amurao said.

Ortega, a veterinarian-turned journalist, who once headed a crocodile conservation park that became a tourist attraction, unsuccessfully contested 2004 elections to become Palawan governor on a platform of tackling illegal mining on the island.

Friends say his advocacy earned him many enemies.

Media and rights groups say the Philippines is one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists.

They say a culture of impunity pervades the country, where powerful figures often act above the law and guns are easily available.

Ortega was the 142nd journalist killed since the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the restoration of democracy in 1986, according to Filipino media groups.

Since it’s the first time the Supreme Court will conduct a multiple-choice-question (MCQ) type in the 2011 bar examinations, the students’ essay-type tests or part two of the exams regardless of the MCQ score will still be corrected. This is to clear the high court's earlier pronouncement that the essays of those who got a failing mark in the MCQ will no longer be corrected.

High court spokesman Jose Midas Marquez earlier explained that the change in the type of tests given in the bar examination will test the student’s knowledge of the law. The MCQ will focus on provisions of the law while the essay will test the student’s capability in applying the law.

In Bar Matters 2265 dated January 18, 2011, the high court said since it has no historical data yet for computing the passing grade in MCQ kind of tests, the essay type will be corrected regardless of the result of the student’s MCQ exams. Bar Matters are like memorandum circulars regularly released by the high court to law schools and concerned offices.

“In the interest of establishing needed data, the answers of all candidates in the essay-type examination in the year 2011 shall be corrected irrespective of the results of their MCQ examinations, which are sooner known because they are electronically corrected,” the high court said.

But the high court pointed that “in future bar examinations, the bar chairperson shall recommend to the court the disqualification of those whose grades in the MCQ are so low that it would serve no useful purpose to correct their answers in the essay-type examinations.”

At the same time, the high court ordered future bar exam chairpersons to study the feasibility of the following:

(a) Holding in the interest of convenience and economy bar examinations simultaneously in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao; and

(b) Allowing those who pass the MCQ examinations but fail the essay-type tests to take removal examinations in the following year.

This year’s bar exams will be held in November at the University of Santo Tomas. Marquez said this is the first time in two decades that the bar examination has been moved to another month.

BRUSSELS - Pirates hijacked a German cargo ship north of the Seychelles in an attack over the weekend, the EU's naval mission confirmed Wednesday, as the nearest Navfor vessel was too far away to help.

JAKARTA—A strong 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck off Indonesia's Sumatra province on Wednesday, the US Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning was issued.

MOSCOW, Russia - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed revenge on Tuesday for a suicide bombing that killed at least 35 people at Russia's busiest airport and underscored the Kremlin's failure to stem a rising tide of attacks.

TUNIS, Tunisia - Tunisia said Wednesday it had issued an international arrest warrant for ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, as anti-government protesters clashed with riot police in the capital.

In a move sure to be welcomed by the social-network-savvy -and largely Roman Catholic- Philippine population, Pope Benedict XVI endorsed the use of social media in an age of "vast cultural transformation."

MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Jose Miguel Zubiri called for a hearing of the Senate Committee on Sports and Youth to discuss the current state of Philippine football and sports funding from the government.

ROME—A furious 36-year-old Italian woman has filed for divorce just a month after her wedding because her husband brought his mother on their honeymoon, ANSA news agency reported Wednesday.

As the couple set off for their honeymoon to France in December, the newly-wed was shocked to find her new mother-in-law at Rome's Fiumicino airport, all set to come on the trip, the agency cited her lawyers as saying.

When she protested, her husband of two days said he couldn't leave his mother alone for health reasons.

The three spent the honeymoon together, but as soon as they returned from France the woman filed for divorce, citing an "excessive emotional attachment" between her future ex-husband and his mother.

WASHINGTON - An international team of astronomers say they have glimpsed the earliest galaxy yet, a smudge of light from nearly 13.2 billion years ago - a time when the cosmos was a far lonelier place.

The research has not been confirmed, and some astronomers are skeptical. The new findings are based on an image from the Hubble Space Telescope and are published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. The scientists calculate the new-found galaxy dates to just 480 million years after the Big Bang.

That would trump last year's announcement by a French team who said they found a galaxy from about 600 million years after the Big Bang. That discovery also is not universally accepted and one of the skeptics is the co-author of the latest paper.

Even more interesting than the advanced age of the newly discovered galaxy is the absence of other similarly aged bright galaxies. That indicates that star formation during that point in the universe's early childhood was happening at a rate 10 times slower than it was millions of years later, said study co-author Garth Illingworth of the University of California Santa Cruz.

Illingworth described what the cosmos might look like at that time period when the universe was smaller and the stars bluer and dimmer.

"It wouldn't be nearly as interesting — a blob here, a blob there," he said in a phone interview.

But other astronomers have their doubts about this discovery.

Richard Ellis at the California Institute of Technology is troubled because Illingworth's team originally found three 13.2 billion-year-old galaxies and then withdrew their original study. The authors then came up with an entirely different galaxy, so all that switching "makes it difficult to believe," he said.

Illingworth said originally he and colleagues confused what may have been real light from billions of years ago and background "noise" from the process of looking so far away, so they re-did the study. He said they then found the new galaxy and saw that it was more likely to be real than the previous ones.

"We made a mistake and luckily we had ways to catch it before we went out and it was formally published," said Illingworth whose co-authors included astronomers from the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Ellis and Henry Ferguson of the Space Telescope Science Institute said they were also worried that the Illingworth team only used one of several telescope filters to find this galaxy. They speculated that they might have found an object that's much nearer.

Illingworth acknowledged in his paper that there is a 20 percent chance that the smudge they found is contamination, but "we're pretty sure it's a real object."

Ferguson said Illingworth did "a very good job of making that detection convincing."

The vaunted 20-year-old Hubble telescope has progressively produced images of older and more distant objects. Peering earlier into space will require the more advanced cameras of NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope, Illingworth said. However, it isn't likely to launch until at least 2015.

The farther away a galaxy, the longer it takes for light from it to travel, so seeing the most distant galaxies is like looking back in time. If the new research is correct, light from the newly found galaxy would have traveled 13.2 billion light years to be seen by Hubble.